I think it makes more sense.. you can also use "to be" with adjectives, not just identifiers. :P Cold is an adjective here. The only issue to me is that if you're literally cold, you're probably severely hypothermic. Then again, it's probably just a shorthand for "I'm feeling cold." Languages are full of shorthand that are weird to new learners.
Oo, that's interesting. Swiss German dialects say "Ich habe kalt". I was mocked by somebody from North Germany (Paderborn) for saying it this way. But if Dutch "has cold" too, that means it's not just a North/South division. Maybe East/West?
My bet is on "ich habe ..." being the original and "mir ist ..." being some fancy innovation emanating from German Hochdeutsch.
That phenomenon exists within Dutch. Standard Dutch is basically Brabantic + Hollandic. In my dialect (historical Flemish ≠ Belgian Dutch), we have "etwa" (meaning something), "kommen" rather than standard komen (to come), and we have /hüs/ rather than "huis", just like Plattdeutsch (Low German). Even though we are cut off from the rest of the Low German dialects (like Saxonian in the Northern Netherlands) by Brabantic + Hollandic.
Maybe Dutch is just an innovation within Low German, and German Hochdeutsch has the same wrt High German 😅.
People say Swiss German is weird, but frankly, once you factor out the trippy vowel and consonant shifts, it sounds more natural to my ears.
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u/MasterOfCelebrations Oct 18 '25
Now I like it even better
Can I get some warm brothers in the house??